General > General Technical Chat

LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.

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PlainName:

--- Quote ---I think I see were our discussion went off track.
--- End quote ---

Easily happens here!

I apologise for not allowing that it had.

nctnico:

--- Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2023, 10:18:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: PlainName on August 05, 2023, 08:30:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2023, 09:15:31 am ---There's also the people living pay check to pay check who will always buy the cheapest version they can get their hands on.
If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

--- End quote ---

That assumes they could afford the upfront cost of the 'better' light in the first place. People living in a precarious financial state don't have the funds to invest in the future. Buy a good light and something else doesn't get bought. Or buy a cheap light and the other thing. So it's going to cost them more in the future because they'll buy many cheap lights instead of one good one, but when you don't have the funds to invest that's what happens. Same applies to food (and everything else) - they pay more for their food because they can only afford single-portion sizes and/or poor quality, whereas someone with money will buy in bulk and save overall.

--- End quote ---

You seem to have missed the point I was making here.  There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage which has been changed to reduce the thermals to something that will not fail prematurely. If you can't afford a higher wattage light or multiple lights you just have a dimmer room. But at least you can see everything. 
If a room light is changed from 20W to 15W or 10W, sure it's not as nice but it's totally usable. You don't have to drop the power by much to massively increase lifespan.
Also LEDs tend to be more efficient at lower power anyway, so there is additional savings there.

--- End quote ---
You can argue this all you want but the general public wants the brightest bulb for the lowest cost. If people wanted long life bulbs, manufacturers will produce long life bulbs. And many manufacturers do that in fact and make long-life lamps as well. https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient

Psi:

--- Quote from: nctnico on August 06, 2023, 09:22:30 am ---
--- Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2023, 10:18:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: PlainName on August 05, 2023, 08:30:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2023, 09:15:31 am ---There's also the people living pay check to pay check who will always buy the cheapest version they can get their hands on.
If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

--- End quote ---

That assumes they could afford the upfront cost of the 'better' light in the first place. People living in a precarious financial state don't have the funds to invest in the future. Buy a good light and something else doesn't get bought. Or buy a cheap light and the other thing. So it's going to cost them more in the future because they'll buy many cheap lights instead of one good one, but when you don't have the funds to invest that's what happens. Same applies to food (and everything else) - they pay more for their food because they can only afford single-portion sizes and/or poor quality, whereas someone with money will buy in bulk and save overall.

--- End quote ---

You seem to have missed the point I was making here.  There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage which has been changed to reduce the thermals to something that will not fail prematurely. If you can't afford a higher wattage light or multiple lights you just have a dimmer room. But at least you can see everything. 
If a room light is changed from 20W to 15W or 10W, sure it's not as nice but it's totally usable. You don't have to drop the power by much to massively increase lifespan.
Also LEDs tend to be more efficient at lower power anyway, so there is additional savings there.

--- End quote ---
You can argue this all you want but the general public wants the brightest bulb for the lowest cost. If people wanted long life bulbs, manufacturers will produce long life bulbs. And many manufacturers do that in fact and make long-life lamps as well. https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient

--- End quote ---

I've seen many LED bulbs that claim 50,000 hours / 50 year lifespans.
Very few I actually believe the claim due to the case temp on the thermal camera.

Microdoser:
Personally, I would rather fit 5 Dubai bulbs than one 'standard' bulb. They would use the same power, give out much more light, and last a LOT longer. Barring that, I'll continue to buy my own LED strips and undervolt them.
 
I can swap out any failed bulbs using spare ones from old strips, they will last forever (for a limited interpretation of 'forever'), and I can choose the exact colour of light I get.
 
I like a lot of light for my tired old eyes, and I can get that using much less power than if I were to buy cheap, or expensive, bulbs from a store.

tooki:

--- Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2023, 08:39:43 am ---
--- Quote from: gnuarm on August 05, 2023, 07:50:54 am ---So the only possibilities are inferior products that fail as soon as the warranty is up, or products that last forever? 

I think I need to stop reading EEVblog.  This place is insane!

--- End quote ---

I wish i could understand your point of view.
Which of these statements do you disagree with.

1) Most LED lights run way to hot and fail early because of it.

2) The LED lights above would last way longer if they didn't run them so hot.

3) Making them run at under 50C is trivial (be lowering output wattage) and would add next to nothing to product cost. Obviously cost to consumer would be a little higher as they might have to buy more lights or bigger light get same output, but the product lasting for so much longer would make up for that by many times.

4) Most companies are never going to voluntary make changes that cost next to nothing but make longer lasting products because it's going to reduce profit. (unless there's a major shift in public buying habits and people stop trying to save a dollar now even if it cost $5 later)

5) The best way to fix this is for the government to pass some sort of law that prevents companies making consumable products that perform badly when there's no technical reason for it.  Or by forced warranty length in industries where there are these problems, like lighting.
I know the exact law and how it works would need to have a lot of thought. And implementing it is not that easy but i think it's totally doable.



I suspect your issue is with point 5 and I suspect its due to you being very antigovernment regulation.
Which I assume is because the government where you are is maybe not working for the people.
And if so, i would put forward that the issue is then with the government not working, rather than an issue with a law to stop or help reduce planned obsolescent.   Apologies if one of my assumptions in this paragraph is wrong, it's just a guess.

--- End quote ---
1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.
3. Yes, but… Consumers want compact LED lamps that are screw-in replacements for incandescent bulbs. That dictates the mechanical envelope as well as the expected brightness. For example, I have 75W-equivalent LEDs in my ceiling lights in the hallway, because less than that simply isn’t bright enough. It’s a rental apartment so I don’t want to invest lots of money in whole new fixtures that are either natively LED or that can hold two bulbs. So the consequence is that the LED lamps have to be 75W-equivalents that run kinda hot.

Also, having also cobbled together some LED lighting myself using COB LED modules, I think you may be underestimating the amount of heat produced by power LEDs. I have a ~@12W COB module (approximately 3”x1”/80x25mm or so) that I run on a finned heatsink that’s about 4x4x1.5l”/100x100x40mm, with an aluminum slab (about 4x3x0.3”/100x70x8mm) attached as well as both heatsink and shade, all connected with thermal grease. It gets hot, fast. And that’s with a completely separate power supply.

Another aspect is that the warm white LEDs people want for their homes are a bit less efficient than the cool white ones.


For sure, in many LED lamps, it’s the power supplies that fail first, due to them being run very hot. I think there is room for improvement here. (For example, by making more PSU chips that are happy with only ceramic caps, so we don’t have electrolytics anywhere near that heat.) Bu the LEDs themselves fail much faster at higher temperatures, and I don’t think there’s a whole lot that can be done about that. And you can’t legislate physics.

If we implemented a ban like you suggest, the ultimate result would be that the maximum wattage of the LED lamps would be cut dramatically, forcing people to use lamps that are not bright enough for their needs; warm white would disappear; and flicker would increase as manufacturers switched even more lamps to simple capacitive droppers. I don’t think this is a viable solution.

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